Scott Thoma
Jun 1, 2020
Because Paul was a letterwinner at such an early age, he was the youngest athlete in town donning a lettermen’s jacket. It was rare to see him without his jacket on. It became a part of him. He was anything but arrogant, in fact just the opposite, but he loved that jacket.
When former Southwest State University football coach Ralph Young was in the stands
watching a high school football game in the fall of 1971 for any possible recruits, he noticed the
Tracy punter doing some amazing things with his leg.
“That kid punts as well as NFL punters,” he was quoted in a newspaper article.
When Young was told that the 6-foot-2, 170-pound player was only in ninth grade, he was even
more surprised.
But the Tracy fans never got to see this gifted young man develop into what many felt would be
a professional career.
Paul David Mix died of endocarditis, a rare condition in which the heart succumbs to an
infection, on Sept. 26, 1972, exactly one month before his16th birthday.
Mix was one of four children born to Dave and Vivian Mix. His oldest sister, Connie, graduated
in 1973, while Susan was a 1980 graduate.
And his youngest sister, Barbara, was a 1982 Tracy graduate and seven years younger than her
brother. That sister, Barb Hennen, currently lives on a farm outside of Ghent with her husband
Brad and four of their nine children still at home.
“I remember Paul being sick and lying on the couch,” said Barb. “He had two open-heart
surgeries and his scars looked like a ‘T’. He always said the ‘T’ stood for Tracy.”
Paul was a phenomenal athlete in a class of standouts in all sports. He was a man among boys.
“He was by far the best athlete in our class,” said Brian Johnson, a gifted three-sport athlete
himself at Tracy who was one of eight of Paul’s former classmates that were honorary casket
bearers. “And it wasn’t even close.”
Paul was also a varsity golfer in eighth grade and an outstanding “B” squad basketball player
who often outsized and outmuscled his opponent.
“He would have been an unbelievable varsity and college basketball player,” late Tracy varsity
basketball coach Dale Hatch once stated. “With his size and strength to go along with such
agility, he would have been hard to stop.”
This reporter’s father was a Little League baseball coach in Tracy. Coaches back then could
recruit players in town for their team if they ran short. He asked Paul if he would like to play on
the team, which included players that had completed grades four through six. Paul told my
father that he had never played organized baseball, instead spending his time on the links. But
the personable young man agreed to give baseball a try. With only nine players available for the
next game, Paul was inserted into the lineup and batted ninth. The batter’s box on the Little
League field on the east side of town was well over 325 feet from the municipal swimming pool,
although no one ever came anywhere close to hitting the ball that far. That was until Paul
stepped to the plate and launched a rocket that splashed into the shallow end of the pool. Paul
hit the chain-link fence surrounding the pool in his next at bat. “See you next week,” I remember
my dad saying to him after he crossed home plate for the second time. An opposing coach known
for incessantly berating the umpires cried foul and insisted the Mix family provide a birth
certificate to prove Paul wasn’t breaking the age requirement rule. The birth certificate was
handed over and Paul continued to make a “splash” in other games that summer.
Unfortunately, Paul became ill in the spring of 1972 and eventually succumbed to the illness. It
was a somber day all over town that day.
“He developed a staph infection, but they never were able to determine what it was caused by,”
said Barb. “We never knew if it was from an open sore or a blister or something else. The
infection eventually just ate away at his heart.”
Because Paul was a letterwinner at such an early age, he was the youngest athlete in town
donning a lettermen’s jacket. It was rare to see him without his jacket on. It became a part of
him. He was anything but arrogant, in fact just the opposite, but he loved that jacket.
When Paul was laid to rest, he was buried wearing his lettermen’s jacket.
The mourners poured into Butson Funeral Home for the visitation with lines well outside the
building waiting to get a chance to pay their respects.
“As athletically gifted as Paul was,” Johnson told, “he was equally as nice of a person. He treated
everyone the same. It was so hard to believe the day that I was told he died because he was such
a big, strong athlete.”
Living just a few houses away from the Mixes, this reporter’s recollection of Paul was that of a
hero. The big brother I never had. I would often be playing in the front yard of my home and
Paul would always stop to say hello on his way past our house on his bicycle. He almost always
had a Sugar Daddy sucker in his mouth and would give me the complimentary animal card that
came inside the wrapper. Even though Paul rode his bicycle everywhere, including his paper
route, I never once saw him grip the handlebars; instead riding like a two-wheeled unicycle,
turning corners by leaning one way or the other and never once being involved in a mishap.
Barb Hennen sees a lot of her brother in her and Brad’s six boys.
“They are all tall and athletic, like Paul was,” she said.
The Hennen’s three oldest boys, Robert, Dan and Grant are all 6-foot-4, which is what Paul was
projected to be by the time he was a senior. Thomas, who will be a junior next fall, and Jacob,
who will be a freshman, both are around 6-foot-2 and are developing into solid players on the
basketball court like their late uncle. The youngest sibling, Leo, who will be in fifth grade, is
“also tall for his age.”
The Hennens also have three daughters; Audrey and Susie have graduated and left home, while
Beth just graduated with the class of 2017.
It’s a shame that the Hennen children didn’t get to know their uncle, and vice-versa.
“Robert’s middle name is Paul after my brother,” said Barb. “I wish I remembered more about
Paul, but I do know he was a good piano player and a good artist.
“He loved to listen to the Beatles because they thought their harmony was so amazing. And he
collected coins and arrowheads.”
When I visit my parents’ graves to place flowers for Memorial Day, I often stroll over to the
other end of the Tracy Cemetery to visit Paul’s gravesite a feet away from his father’s burial
site\e. Inevitably, tears well up in my eyes as I envision the baseball splashing in the pool, the
no-hands bike rides, the stick of his Sugar Daddy poking between his lips, and his lettermen’s
jacket. Even more, I miss his friendship.
Rest in peace, Paul.
